Okay, so maybe recipes aren’t a BAD thing…

Well, I have a bread recipe that I’ve settled on for every day.  And I’ve been asked to make it every day.  I think my mom is mostly living on it.  I know I am, at least until I can get some whole wheat/rye baked.  1-1/3 cups soy milk, 3 Tbsp. oil, 2 tsp. yeast, 1 tsp. salt, 2 tsp. sugar, 3-1/2 cups bread flour.

Two risings, bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

It’s killer with peanut butter.  Or peanut butter and pomegranate jelly.

Pomegranate jelly.  Now THAT’s a whole ‘nother story.  My total favorite.  It’s sweet, tart, and it looks like quivering rubies in the jar.  And we top the jars with wax, and put in a little pine branch and some redhots to look like holly berries.  That’s just the way we’ve always done it.

We’ve made it from scratch almost every year since I was a little girl.  It’s a total pain in the behind, especially juicing the pomegranates.  It’s worth every sore shoulder we get.  And I want to try a different way of seeding them and getting the juice, but that will have to wait for next fall.

I’m in Love With my Sourdough Starter

Just an update on my Carl’s starter.  I’ve baked countless loaves of bread in the last couple of months, some better than others, but all good enough that my family whine when they have to eat store bread.

I just got done splitting and feeding it, with an eye to sourdough pancakes for lunch.  I generally try to keep a container of pancake batter going in the fridge, with the addition of an egg, soy milk, flour, oil and a bit of soda when the volume gets low.  I eat pancakes for every meal, if’n I’m of a mood.

This starter is just marvelous, and it makes me feel connected to my mom’s family, who were loggers and ranchers in northern California in the late 1800’s.  My mom’s 83, and she says the pancakes are very much like the ones she grew up eating in her Uncle Gene’s kitchen.  (Gene also cooked for logging camps during the summer logging season.)

I prefer mine with homemade pomegranate jelly.  I imagine any jelly with a sweet/tart profile would work well.  Mom thinks hers were usually served with wild plum jam because that’s what was readily available.  No offense to the good people at Welch’s, but I don’t think grape jelly would quite do it.  Lingonberries would probably be great, but we don’t grow a lot of those in California.  I AM going to try marmalade one of these days.  Maple syrup would be wonderful, but I can’t bring myself to put the artificial stuff on these cakes, and the real stuff is just too pricey right now.  I’ll try to grab some at Trader Joe’s next time I’m “down the hill.”

Actually, I rolled one around a couple of fried eggs one day and ate it like that.  It was killer!  Of course, it was a BIG pancake.  I’ve taken to making one big pancake instead of messing with several small ones.  Call me lazy, and you’ll be right.  But heck, call me busy and you’ll be right too.  The big one is just simpler, and I’ve never been good at flipping pancakes, so this lessens my chances of disaster.  Besides, there’s just something sensuous and seductive, not to mention self indulgent, about attacking a pancake that’s almost as big as the plate it’s served on!